Friday morning, I packed some riding stuff in the car and headed to downtown Prescott to pre-ride some of Sunday’s 50 mile course. There was a 15 mile “fun ride” Friday afternoon that used the first and last climbs of the race course, so I figured that was the easiest way to see the good parts of the course and not get lost in the process.

My pre-ride was nice. The sections I got to see were a nice mix of flowy and rowdy, and were a good sample of the rest of the 50 mile course. Since I was taking it kinda easy, I stopped for some photos at the overlook that you pass just before dropping back down to the city (some other riders were stopped & taking photos, too, so we traded cameras)…

 

After I arrived back downtown, I cleaned up, grabbed lunch from a local place on the square, and headed to the Pro Race meeting. Highlight of the meeting? The women’s lead moto guy telling the men something along the lines of, “I will catch some of you. Move out of the way and don’t make me force the issue, because I’ve got an x00 pound bike with a motor, and I can force the issue.” (the women’s race started 10 minutes after the men’s race)

Following the meeting, I stopped at a local shop- High Gear Bicycle Shop– to clean my bike up and swap tires for the Friday night fat tire crit. I picked the Maxxis Maxxlite 29. It’s ~250g, and has a very minimal tread. They make  no bones about it- it’s a race-only, no sharp-stuff tire. It turned out to be an excellent choice for the crit (I’m kinda stoked to have a set to try in other random race situations, too. I’m thinking Clear Creek in Oxford and maybe Stanky Creek for the TN State Championships). I put a super light 650b tube in them just for ease of setup, but they popped onto the rim like they’d work tubeless.

 

By the time I’d done all that, I had to hustle back to the hotel, eat a snack, relax a few minutes, and get packed to come back to the 5:15 crit. Here’s the deal with the crit- the only “prize” for the crit, other than some nice cash primes, is that the top 5 finishers get a call-up for Sunday’s race. However, the nature of the start of Sunday’s race doesn’t really make a call-up that beneficial. So, since all of the racers are required to toe the line and start, and riders in contention to be lapped are pulled by officials, a bunch of racers end up just riding a few laps then pulling out. It sucks a little that more don’t stay in the race, but, given the course and the pace, I understand the pursuit of self preservation.

The course is pretty brutal. For you stats junkies out there, here’s the Training Peaks graph of the first lap:

 

For those of you who are familiar with “Crybaby Hill” on the Tulsa Tough criterium course, this was essentially two of those (crowds/hecklers/onlookers included!), with the first one being a steeper (~11%) grade than the second. On the flipside, it made me giggle a little to watch some of the best women I’ve seen on a MTB get a little freaked out by the 30-something mph turn on the bottom side of the hill.

When the race started, I didn’t hold back. I stuck in the tail end of the lead group. A couple of laps later, and I’m in a pack of really strong chasers, still watching some of the most awesome women in mountain biking just seconds ahead of me. I was literally looking at the awesome riders next to me and thinking, “WTF am I doing here, and how am I going this fast?!?”

In the second half of the race, things blew apart some more. I gained/lost/gained/lost a few spots. I couldn’t see straight, and it seemed like there was so much lactic acid in my blood that it was leaking out into my ears and mouth. I couldn’t help but love it, and I couldn’t have made myself quit at that point. I kept wiping what I thought was snot and drool off of my face, only to find out after the race that my nose had started bleeding…

 

Gnarly.

I ended up 13th place out of 46 starters. Sounds really impressive, given the field, but, given the fact that a lot of the fast women quit in the name of self-preservation, not quite as awesome as it would be if everyone was out there giving 100%. I didn’t care- it was probably the most agonizing and awesome race of my life, and I had a blast doing it.

After I caught my breath and rinsed my nose/face off (thanks to the Prescott firefighters for the saline and gauze), I walked back up the hill to cheer the men’s race a little, and meet some JRA fans who had been cheering me on earlier. Ben gave me a shot of  Scotch, and it made my legs feel better. I think he should have some action shots as well, and I’ll post them if he does.

The fun thing about the Whiskey Off-Road is that you race Friday night, then again on Sunday. So, you’ve got all day to lay around and recover on Saturday. I stopped by the bike shop to put my regular tires back on, then found the greenway, the pumptrack, and a great massage… prettymuch my definition of the most perfect recovery day possible.

I figure I should get a jump on my Whiskey blogs since it’s been an exciting weekend so far (and the main race hasn’t even happened yet!)

I hate flying. I hate being x-ray raped in security, I hate being in cramped quarters with lots of people, and I hate the potential of both flight delays/cancellations and the possible disaster of having my luggage & bike lost or severely damaged. Also, my ears hurt really bad during landings.

So, I pack up the toaster and drive all over the place. The trip out to Prescott, AZ was completed in two days’ worth of driving.

I don’t always take pictures when I’m driving, but when I do, it’s because this dude in the Sprinter van has been tailing me since West Memphis, and I wanted to send it to someone so that the police would have a primary suspect if I were to be kidnapped…

 

(he exited in Little Rock)

I stopped in Amarillo. I probably could have made it a couple hours further down I40, but the timing and location worked out so that I was able to ride some of the local trails just before sunset on Wednesday afternoon. That part of Texas is beautiful…

 

 

Thursday, I figured I’d go ahead and get to Prescott so I could settle in and ride a little to loosen up the car legs. The drive across the Great Plains area and New Mexico is equally as gorgeous as the previous day’s drive. The sky is so huge, it makes you feel like you’re in a giant bubble.

 

Once I was at my hotel, I decided that I needed yoga more than a ride, and found a class at a studio about 15 minutes away from where I was staying. It felt goooood, and afterward, I met up with Bruce from ProGold and some guys for Thai food in downtown Prescott. By then, I was dragging ass pretty hard. Arizona doesn’t celebrate daylight savings time, so, during day #2 of driving, time changed by 2 hours. The first night/morning was a little rough, but as I type this, I’m feeling pretty used to the change. I’m sure that once I’m home, I’ll be obnoxiously awake at my usual pre-10pm bedtime.

Post #2 will encompass Friday- some pre-riding, a riders’ meeting, and a killer fat-tire criterium race.

Tomorrow, I’ll be heading out to make the 21ish hour drive from Memphis to Prescott, AZ for the Whiskey Off-Road. It’s basically straight west on I-40 until Flagstaff, Arizona. So, since I’m gonna make most of the drive in the next two days, I was hoping to get a little help from the readers out there with finding a spot to spin around at the end of the driving days. A trail would be nice, but a “this 10-20 mile road route won’t get you killed by traffic” would be fine as well. I don’t want to get too far from the interstate, but I’m willing to go up to 30 minutes if necessary.

Tomorrow- somewhere in North Texas. Amarillo is about the halfway point of the drive for me, so there or a little west of there.

Thursday- somewhere on I-17 in Arizona (basically anywhere between Flagstaff and Prescott). I plan on being in Prescott for the Pro Rider meeting at noon on Friday, so as long as I’m at least south of Flagstaff, the drive won’t be too bad.

 

If anyone has suggestions or wants to grab lunch in Prescott on Saturday, hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, or email (andrea at brickhouseracing.com)!

Like I mentioned before, I was highly undecided as to whether I’d race this weekend. Coach had said something along the lines of, “racing this weekend will either put your fitness over the top or into a hole for Whiskey next weekend.”

Friday morning, I felt pretty good… still undecided, though. I had a bunch of errands to run, yoga, a PT appointment, and a ride to see how I was feeling. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I was thinking about bike racing and heard this song:

 

I can’t explain why, but while I was listening to it, I decided to take my chances and race.  After the errands were done, I went home and pulled my Cannondale SuperX off of the wall, put some fresh sealant in the tires (running my favorite wheel/tire setup for this sort of race- Industry 9 i25TL road wheels and some tubeless CX tires), and installed a 34t small ring in place of the 36t that was on my CX crank at the time. There was an 11-26 cassette on the wheels already, and I didn’t feel like hunting down the 11-28, so I decided I’d just go for it on the gearing. By 5:00, I was packed and ready to roll to Perryville, AR.

Fast forward a little, and I’m in a quaint motel on Harris Brake Lake just south of Perryville. One thing I’ve learned through half a year of gluten-free eating is how to make a pretty good chicken/veggie/rice bowl prior to going out of town. It takes a little extra work on the front end, but having a healthy meal waiting for you when you arrive into the middle of nowhere at 9:00pm is totally worth it…

 

I battled through a night of fitful sleep (the little Harris Brake motel is nice, but the walls are paper-thin, and apparently the guys next door were in & out all night fishing or something). Saturday morning, it was 37deg cold, and the sunrise was beautiful…

I had some breakfast and packed everything into the car to go to registration. I paid, briefly discussed my views on pros who feel “entitled” to race any race they want, went to the start, and rode around a little trying to warm up. Luckily, the start of the race is a neutral rollout past the Perryville city limits. It has potential to be somewhat of a clusterufck (like any mass-start-for-all MTB race), so I lined up in the front and, when the signal was given to go, jumped into the slipstream of the lead vehicle… safety and a nice motorpace warmup, all in one!

Once the lead vehicle pulled off, a group of hammery guys formed. They took off hard up the first road climb, and I decided to slide back into the next group, which included another woman (Priscilla Cazer, who had finished 15 minutes after me at Ouachita). I hung with them as they chased after the lead group, and felt like I was going a little harder than I really wanted to given the 70 miles and lots of climbing we had ahead of us. I stuck with it, though, and, as we crested the top of the hill, Priscilla informed me that she was only racing the 45 mile “tour” version of the Slobberknocker.

Ohhhh… ok.

We turned off of the main road onto the gravel, and I backed off a little bit and had some gel to prep for the first of the bigger climbs. It was a good idea, because my legs really started to come back around just as I came to the initial pitches of the longest one of the day. I paced myself into a mix of “singlespeed” and seated-type climbing (not my favorite, but gearing and traction don’t always allow for standing on the steeper stuff), and felt good all the way up. I remembered on the way down that I was on a CX bike, and that I’d need to dial the descending down a notch or two in order to avoid killing a tire or something on one of the rowdy sections of forest road.

For a while, I basically rode in the same rhythm. Just like last year,  I had a few guys on MTBs that I’d pass going uphill, then they’d pass me back going downhill. It continued that way until just after the “rowdiest” section of “road” on the course (a sharp, washed out jeep road made mostly of exposed rock beds), when, on a seemingly normal gravel section, I cut my rear tire on a rock. Sealant went everywhere. Without panic, I pulled off and installed a tube as quickly as possible…

4 minutes and 8 seconds, to be exact.

Between the previous section of tricky road descending, the flat, and the long descent into the next aid station (an out & back section of the course), Laureen Coffelt  (riding a full suspension MTB and able to go waaaay faster than me downhill) put a serious dent into my lead. As I was about 100 feet out of the aid station, she was on her way in- maybe a minute back at the most. Knowing that she was a) wearing a camelback and not likely to stop and b) going to come out of it with extra motivation that I was so close, I stepped my climbing game up a notch or two.

At that point in the race, on a cyclocross bike, nothing doesn’t hurt. I’ve always said that, compared to racing on a mountain bike, the places where the CX bike is faster will outweigh the places where it’s slower. However, that comes with the caveat of “if you can deal with the fact that the roughness of the roads is going to make you hurt all over.” The forest roads around that area are pretty rocky, and have the ability to remove small cars from service, as I learned the hard way several years ago. At 3 hours in, not only do you have a healthy dose of climbing in your legs, but everything from your butt up to your neck/shoulders, arms, and hands is aching from the constant forest road beating.

It was at that point that I channeled something I’d learned about in Yoga… the idea of Santosha, or contentment. It’s something that I’d heard from several yoga instructors, but that Kirsti talked about at length during a challenging class the previous Thursday. As we were holding a particular pose for an extended period of time, she asked us to focus on the sensations that we were feeling right then rather than avoiding them. The idea was, rather than trying to tune out feelings of discomfort, to explore them and accept them as a means of finding Santosha. I found myself doing the same thing as I was hammering through the final two hours of racing. Rather than attaching negative emotions to the pain and trying to distract my mind into thinking about something else, I went back to the idea of accepting the discomfort and being content despite all of it.

During that time, I built my lead back up to nearly 20 minutes.

So, I won in a time of 4 hours, 53 minutes- about a minute faster than last year (though, last year, I hadn’t flatted). The Slobberknocker not only offers a nice cash prize, but the trophies are some of the best out there… handmade by a local firefighter:

 

Now, it’s a race to see how well I can recover before Friday evening’s Whiskey Fat-tire criterium and the 50-mile race on Sunday.

 

 

OK, here are the rules…

You are welcome to download any of these photos free of charge. If you want the high res file of yourself, I’d be happy to provide it- just email me andrea@brickhouseracing . com

There’s ONE stipulation, though- if you post one on a blog, send it in an email, post on a forum, etc… please also post a link to Brickhouse Racing (copy and paste from the address bar above). If you don’t, bad karma will make you flat during your next race.